Second Week in Tennessee, USA

I was visiting Tennessee at the right time in May. The weather was cool and everything was flowering and the blackberries were fruiting. Infact the back and front yards had erupted with flowers and fruit. When I left the last visit, the blackberry was a tiny slim twig with a few leaves sprouting out of it. When I returned it had climbed up the arch which had been put there for a flowering Mandevilla vine. Instead the Black berry had climbed up and it was loaded with fruit. I just stood dumbstruck staring at the large green fruit all over the prickly vine. Obviously the home made compost too was working.

My mind was racing, now how to save them for Alaina from the birds? Andrew showed me a roll of plastic netting that he had in the garage and I fashioned a sort of cag over the arch and over the fruit, tying it down to the arch. For the two weeks I was there not a bird came near the ‘cage’ and I hoped they would not when I left as the fruit were just about turning pink.

The tomatoes too had started fruiting with little yellow cherry tomatoes which Alaina promptly pulled off and ate. But the veggie patch needed work as the Okra and the Egg plant had been planted in the soil and the worry was would they grow. We need not have worried as in the Autumn, Andrew cleared the leaves from the front garden from under his Sugar Maple and his river birch and threw them in a pile where the veggie patch is in summer. The leaves rotted under the snow and when the snow melted,the earthworms did their magic.

I added compost from elsewhere to the patch and I have been shown the Okra and the Eggplant on Face Time and they have already fruited and Alaina was delighted with her first harvest. Some sticks of mint too were put down so that they could enjoy fresh mint and cilantro from their garden while cooking.

Sadly though the birds had polished off their first crop of peaches and twelve peaches just disappeared while they were at work! Nets will have to be thrown on the trees in the coming year to prevent the birds finishing the new crop and save them like the black berries were. Wet waste composting if done scientifically is easy and quick in the summer weather. In the winter let the snow fall all over your buried waste and the melting snow will rot away the waste and give you wonderful compost, which is a mix of a variety of minerals.

An old packet of Zucchini was planted wondering if the seeds would sprout and they all did. So there will be a jungle at the back unless another arch is put up and the zucchini allowed to climb it. Then the vegetable will hang downwards and the fruit will grow on that. I am sure with that delicious compost they can look at a bumper harvest enough for their neighbours and friends.